Did I belong in the graduate English program at Elite National University? I had the right grade-point average and GRE scores to get in, and I wrote a personal statement about spending a summer reading all of Hemingway's work, which showed my ability to stick with a task. On the basis of all that as well as a writing sample analyzing Richard III and whatever polite exaggerations my recommenders sent, the graduate program admitted me, a hick from Flyover College.
But did I belong there?
Judging by the evaluations my freshman students gave me at the end of my first semester of teaching, I did not belong in graduate school. I received the third-worst rating of all the teaching assistants in the first-year composition program. I know I ranked third from the bottom because the director of the program, "Dr. Dreedle," helpfully posted everyone's evaluation scores on a bulletin board. Although Dr. Dreedle thought it important that every TA know how every other TA fared, the program did nothing to help a poorly rated TA do better. It was as if instructors simply proved excellent or terrible the first moment they ran a classroom, and nothing could change that.
If by posting the scores Dr. Dreedle meant to tell me that my teaching abilities would always be inadequate, I didn't pick up on his message. Since I hoped to work at a teaching-oriented institution someday, I set out on my own to improve my classroom performance, and at the end of spring semester, my rating just made it into the upper half. By the end of my second year, I'd risen even further. I considered that a demonstration of personal integrity, but since good teaching didn't count for much at Elite National U., and since I spent at least as much time on teaching as on studying literature, a person might conclude that I misread the value system of the English profession.
Some professors assume that the most intelligent people will always rise to the top through natural selection, and thus they tell students, "If you're good enough, you'll get a tenure-track position." In my graduate program, that translated into "If you're good enough, you know everything before you arrive on campus," as if students either were born perfect or ought to go home. Some graduate students adopted that belief. The best example was "Antoinette." One day in the student union, Antoinette complained to me about her fellow graduate students in a Chaucer class. "Those people can't understand Chaucer," she said.
I'd taken Chaucer as an undergrad, and I recalled that it took a while to get used to Middle English, so I said, "Maybe this class is their first exposure to Chaucer."
"So what?" Antoinette said. "I'd never read Canterbury Tales before this semester."
"Come on," I said, and recited the beginning of Canterbury Tales from memory. "'Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote/The droughte of March hath perced to the roote.' You didn't understand that the first moment you read it."
"I certainly did," Antoinette declared. "Anyone who doesn't understand Chaucer the first time through doesn't belong in grad school."
After that, Antoinette displayed toward me the same disdain she had shown for the struggling Chaucerians. If graduate students had to understand all texts instantly and thoroughly, I should have packed my books and left.
Elite National U.'s graduate English program also assumed that students came to the campus already knowing how to write papers at the graduate level. I had trouble understanding what professors wanted until I asked a more experienced graduate student to show me one of his papers from a previous semester.
But my strategy paled beside that of another grad student, the entrepreneurial "Darwin." At Elite National U., professors placed graded papers in the graduate students' mailboxes rather than handing them back in class. When Darwin knew that a professor had returned an assignment, he marched to the mailboxes, skimmed each of his colleagues' papers, compared their arguments with his own, read the faculty member's comments, and noted the grade. His methodology showed him not only how the professor graded but also how he could outdo each of the rest of us.
Some academics believe they can outdo others because their intelligence alone will open doors for them, and they disparage networking. Darwin saw through that belief as easily as I did. I tried to impress the professors, of course, but Darwin could beat me at glad-handing any time he felt like it. He frequently chatted up the graduate professors, and complimented them whenever possible. They adored him in return. Professors praised Darwin, invited him to join them for lunch in the faculty dining room, and recommended him for awards. Even the irascible Dr. Dreedle, the most difficult person in the department, cheered up when Darwin entered the room.
In any field with severely limited job opportunities, the success of one person depends at least partially upon the failure of others, and Darwin did his best to thin the ranks of his competition at Elite National U. His favorite tactic involved intimidation. For example, one day, when a couple of other TA's and I were in our office, Darwin popped his head in and announced, "'Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean.' Name the author and the title."
The three of us shrugged.
"It's from Swinburne's 'Hymn to Proserpine.' I'm surprised none of you knew that." He then went down the hall and shouted a line of poetry at some first-year students in the next office.
To be fair to Darwin, I should explain that he had a focus I lacked. I came to graduate school with a vague notion about teaching at a liberal-arts college like my alma mater, but Darwin had a sharply defined vision of himself becoming a distant, untouchable genius who published ferociously and never met a freshman face to face. He fixated on studying English and becoming a research-university professor to the exclusion of all else. I certainly enjoyed literature, but I felt equally interested in subjects such as World War I aircraft, black-and-white photography, and the golden age of radio. If succeeding in English meant giving up the other wonders of the world, I couldn't compete with Darwin.
Although Darwin adapted to graduate school more readily than I did, in hindsight, someone might argue that I did belong in graduate school, since I completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in less than seven years and landed a position at a liberal-arts college, whereas my colleagues' adventures went less smoothly. Antoinette never found a tenure-track job, while Darwin, despite his focus on becoming an academic superstar, ended up at a small branch campus of a public university. He stayed there for several years before leaving the profession entirely.
I would like to tell myself that our respective fates indicate that I belonged in graduate school as much as Antoinette or Darwin did, but such flattery collapses when I recall the time that several other students and I got to meet candidates interviewing for a tenure-track position in the department. I enjoyed chatting with each one, but the most intriguing was a man only a few years my senior, the soft-spoken "Dr. Turtle." He'd just defended his dissertation, and revealed that he'd been offered a position at "Gargantuan University," but he didn't want it because that place expected him to lecture to classes of 200. "I could never do that," he declared.
I didn't relish the idea of running a classroom that large, but I knew I would learn to do it if I had to, and could even look upon it as a challenge.
Later Dr. Turtle told us he liked Elite National U. because he could get an acceptable apartment within easy walking distance of the campus library. "I don't know how to drive," he confided. "I never tried to learn. Too scary."
If Dr. Turtle didn't drive a car, what else didn't he do? Did he have interests other than literature? I couldn't be certain from our brief encounter, but I came away with the impression that he focused on research and publication, and nothing else entered his field of vision. Although Dr. Turtle seemed more pleasant than Antoinette or Darwin, I had to wonder whether he represented the ideal toward which all graduate study in English aimed. Did my professors want me to become Dr. Turtle?
When Elite National U. snapped up Dr. Turtle, I decided I had my answer. If I'd known ahead of time that the university expected me to become Dr. Turtle, I never would've applied for admission.
(Editor's Note: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this series are online.)
Comments
1. boiler - March 25, 2010 at 07:57 am
I'm not clear on the point of this. The author didn't do well in his first TA position; he knew some grad students who were jerks; and he considers himself vindicated because he got a job. And one of his professors didn't drive a car. So?
2. proflee - March 25, 2010 at 08:28 am
Henry,
Your point is entirely clear to me. Thanks for an insightful article that makes a point I've been thinking about for years. As an Associate Prof. at a reserach university, I wish I had just one healthy and successful role model.
3. iris411 - March 25, 2010 at 08:33 am
Wow, it certainly opened my eyes. Next time when a fellow graduate student comes by and starts chatting with me, I would have to think 3 times before I mutter anything out. Just in case, in the back of her/his mind, and beneath those friendly smiles, whatever I say or do will become proofs that I'm a jerk.
What's wrong of admiting not able to teach a class of 200? It is not teaching, it's pure brainwashing when class gets this big. What's wrong with not wanting to drive a car?
4. roguerouge - March 25, 2010 at 08:52 am
"I'm not clear on the point of this. The author didn't do well in his first TA position; he knew some grad students who were jerks; and he considers himself vindicated because he got a job. And one of his professors didn't drive a car. So?"
I find it deeply ironic that I'm providing a reading comprehension post about an English program on a web site for academics, but, here it goes:
The author didn't do well in his first TA position... and the department's only training for them as teachers involved public embarrassment. The grad students who were jerks? Were being nurtured by the system to become the next generation of disconnected, covertly hostile professors who don't train their TAs. It's like they believed that hostile feedback without positive reinforcement was the only way to motivate people to become better at their work, like snarking on someone's writing in a national publication's web site.
And the professor at the end of the article? He "could never" try something new or difficult because it was "too scary," with the examples being giving a lecture to a large class and driving. Similarly, there's the negative role model of the grad student who believes that learn anything if you don't get it the first time, making a third example of the risk-adverse nature of academia. If an article is not immediately worthwhile...
5. quoog - March 25, 2010 at 09:25 am
I find the author's snide, arrogant tone revolting. So what if "Dr Turtle" doesn't drive and has fears of crowds? A lot of people have some anxiety issues and still can lead fulfilling lives. Throughout this essay it's implicit that the author is superior to the people he comes across. Guess what, you're not. You have your own undesirable characteristics.
6. jab829 - March 25, 2010 at 09:28 am
I have been very fortunate to experience two institutions (both large, public, research-one universities) at which the English Departments are supportive, congenial environments. I've never seen any evidence of the politics, backstabbing and ruthless Darwinian competition that colored my nightmares about grad school before attending. I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed being a graduate student in English, and I wouldn't trade it.
However, I do like the point you make regarding research vs. teaching. We're being groomed for tenure-track, research-focused jobs, when most of us will end up primarily as teachers. I, for one, *want* to teach. Call me low-brow, but I'm not really in this for the research; I'm in this because I want to teach at the college level. It bothers me that teaching is not encouraged to be our raison d'etre, and strong teaching performance (coupled with good overall performance, of course) does not seem to mean much on the job market.
Then again, I am heartened that you ended up in a good position at a small liberal arts college. You're living the dream, man! But try not to be quite so smug about your failed fellow graduate students; it's unbecoming, and to a potential future failed graduate student, a little unnerving.
7. beulah - March 25, 2010 at 09:40 am
The more articles I read like this, the more grateful I am for my own graduate training.
I did not go to an "elite" graduate school. I was lucky enough to go to a so-called second tier school, one that valued teaching and saw its graduate students as future colleagues. We were given supportive training both before and throughout our time as TAs. Our professors demanded high standards in our work, but also told us how to achieve those standards.
None of my peers got jobs at research institutions after graduation, but nearly all of us are teaching in higher education, most with tenure-track positions. I am now department chair at an excellent state school in the midwest, and I credit that to the excellent mentoring I received at Washington State University. I am sorry to hear that my experience is so rare.
8. copesan - March 25, 2010 at 10:33 am
Teaching as class of 200 "It is not teaching, it's pure brainwashing when class gets this big."
Huh?
9. ots1927 - March 25, 2010 at 11:11 am
Sigh. . . . How many more installments of this indulgent, whiny series must we endure? Mr. Adams is using this column as an analyst's couch from which to vent all of his frustrations about academia. Some of it has been provocative, but it's really getting tiresome, and I hope the editors of the Chronicle will find some better offerings to occupy the space taken up by this dead horse.
10. xtylerc - March 25, 2010 at 11:22 am
Oh, god. Get some therapy and move on.
11. amnirov - March 25, 2010 at 11:54 am
Dear Jesus, please please please stop writing. I can't take it anymore. Just stop. Please.
12. john_drake - March 25, 2010 at 12:54 pm
amnirov,
If you find the observations of one individual so agonizing that you are reduced to pleading, why do you read his pieces?
13. callen485 - March 25, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I've spent the last several days reading this series, and I must say that I am relieved my own graduate school days were so drastically different. I had to teach an introductory biology course lab the first day of my first semester of grad school, and I was both terrified and excited at the same time. I had no real experience teaching, but I had a lesson plan and was ready to try.
Through TA career, I had classes were I felt like I had not communicated with the students and classes were I felt as though I had really sparked the students' interests. I love teaching for those moments, and I think it is sad that some people have such a negative experience.
My advice to grad students: work hard, keep things in perspective, and remember that good teaching is learned.
14. jaysanderson - March 25, 2010 at 01:11 pm
the article was okay, but the comments have been very entertaining. I've worked with a fair number of wacky people since I took up this career 20 years ago, and I think they all commented on this piece. Hi guys!
15. anonscribe - March 25, 2010 at 01:47 pm
judging from this article, i'd say Dr. Adams was in the unfortunate position of having to fraternize with medievalists. don't worry, most grad students aren't that snide or anti-social. you just stumbled into the wolf's lair of self-absorbed alpha nerds.
16. ignoramus - March 25, 2010 at 02:36 pm
The Chronicle is really digging this confessional genre of a super-honest, vunerable, unplugged, pseudonymed professor stories.
It was neat at first. Now it seems like the vulgar quote about opinions and buttholes.
Yawn.
17. johntoradze - March 25, 2010 at 02:45 pm
I knew Dr. Turtle in the sciences. He had, finally, at the age of 50, ponied up to buy a car, gotten driving lessons, and even drove it sometimes. But when I was a grad student in his lab he had me drive him around whenever possible (in my car).
18. marka - March 25, 2010 at 03:53 pm
Hmm ... I'm a bit surprized by some of the comments: I agree that if folks don't enjoy reading this series, then ... don't read it! I don't find such blunt cursory negative comments helpful in any way. ['ignoramus,' 'anonscribe,' et al - some perfect Anonymous pseudonyms! And how hypocritical to point fingers at another writing under a pen name!]
Perhaps they reflect one portion of academia that simply isn't good at teaching, and have no interest in same.
For my part, I had too many profs who took the same kind of 'sink or swim on your own' approach. Math had those who relied far too much on 'proof left to reader' (I graduated with a degree in math, so I was exposed to a lot of that). Law school had its own highly competitive sink or swim -- with fellow students trying to hold your head under water! To me, it was just an excuse for profs who either couldn't or wouldn't spend the time to actually teach -- if the 'proof was left to reader,' why am I paying tuition, and spending time with profs! If I could simply learn it all on my own, what was the point of having classes? Sure, doing research, and conversing with others in the rarefied air of the Ivory Tower, might be the goal of those few you actually do know it all already. But for those actually interesting in learning -- no, it is not 'obvious,' and no, I can't 'prove' it on my own -- we pay to get meaningful instruction & guidance, not condescension.
19. mercy_otis_warren - March 25, 2010 at 04:15 pm
Why do I keep reading this obnoxious series, if I find it so obnoxious? Because I keep hoping against hope for one glimmer of Adams' generosity towards his fellow human beings; for a single person in his academic orbit whom he does not depict as a grade-A solipsistic and tuft-hunting asshole; for one iota of evidence that Adams is, in fact, not a navel-gazing jerkoff who has never stopped expressing his his own inferiority complex by pointing out the exhaustively terrible qualities of others. I keep reading it for the continued fascination of witnessing someone with so deep a pit of bile in his angry gut that even seven *precisely identical* pieces cannot drain it.
20. ignoramus - March 25, 2010 at 04:34 pm
I love psuedo names. I love confessional genres of literature and essays. I love lots of stuff, really. I even like to try things that I suspect I won't like. Then, when I didn't like it, I sometimes love to say why I felt that way.
I read these columns because I am a graduate student on the job market reaching all over the place for wisdom. And, as these types of essays keep popping-up and dragging on, I am starting to sense that the "high drama" of academia might just be the same kind of drama everywhere else.
As I realize thatm, my eyes start to glaze over -- but not before I write a comment to try and express my boredom.
21. john_drake - March 25, 2010 at 04:43 pm
"When Darwin knew that a professor had returned an assignment, he marched to the mailboxes, skimmed each of his colleagues' papers, compared their arguments with his own, read the faculty member's comments, and noted the grade."
Reading graded papers without the authors' knowledge is unethical and possibly illegal. Did other people encounter behavior like this in grad (or law or med) school?
22. kedves - March 25, 2010 at 05:24 pm
This series is still going on? Part SEVEN? How many years ago was this? If you haven't moved on by now, it is really past time to start therapy.
Can you imagine this guy's poor students? His colleagues?
The topic of training graduate students to teach is a good one, but this is a lazy and unhelpful way to go about discussing it.
23. realtyannie - March 25, 2010 at 07:42 pm
While the articles are interesting and validating for everyone with a useless higher degree, who didn't go into academe after all - yes, me, great life and career anyway, no regrets :) - their greater purpose seems to be in generating an endlessly entertaining string of riled up commentary. Keep pi**ing off the readership, Honest Henry!
24. proflee - March 26, 2010 at 08:40 am
One of the things I like most about reading Chronicle articles is reading the comments sections. No where else to commenters feel so entitled to their opinions and feel so entirely correct about their opinions. On the one hand it is hilarious to read the comments. On the other hand is says something about how opinionated and judgemental academics are as a group. Never-the-less, it is great fun to read the comments.
Now to Henry (or whatever your name is). Your bait and switch columns are dead-on consistent with my experiences. When I was looking at graduate programs many years ago, I drove around the mid-west and east-coast to visit the schools and programs to which I had applied (6 of them). At every stop I met with graduate students and at every stop I saw graduate students' eyes swell up with tears when they were talking about frustrations with their programs. The pattern was clear and consistent. At some of the best schools in the country, graduate students were not feeling good about themselves. I know that not everyone's experiences were like that -- but many were.
25. mgunthe - March 26, 2010 at 09:14 am
Wow... the comments here are amazing.
26. lpratt - March 26, 2010 at 09:32 am
Personally, I am offended by the way Professor Adams demeans turtles by naming his timid professor Dr. Turtle. Turtles have a natural defense mechanism that causes them to hide in their shells. It is insulting and unfair to a group underrepresented in this discussion to compare them to unnaturally fearful academics.
27. dega8987 - March 26, 2010 at 10:15 am
As a current graduate student, I must say that many of the comments left on these articles make me utterly disheartened. Seeing people respond with such disdain to an inquiry about the pedagogical practices of graduate programs really drives home the point that the most important lesson you can learn in graduate school is how to police others into the expression of the "correct" thoughts and blind institutional rule-following. Perhaps you disagree with Dr. Adams and think there are good reasons for treating your graduate students (or colleagues/ non-academic neighbors/ relatives/undergraduate students/ baristas) with contempt because you have a Ph.D. If so, I would invite you to write an article earnestly articulating exactly why such a practice is worthwhile. I can't think of one good reason why there shouldn't be an earnest examination and reexamination of graduate school pedagogy and commend Dr. Adams for engaging in that task irrespective of whether I agree with everything he has written in this series.
28. demery1 - March 26, 2010 at 11:17 am
Drop the pseudonym and write a book. Unless you cowgirl up and actually tell the story, it reads like fiction and inspires a bunch of "Me too" and "Na-ahh!" dreck. It also tends to diminish the important and provocative case that we a part of the early installments.
Lit people don't teach comp well, and lit programs don't train students to teach comp well. I think this argument was made perfectly clear 15-20 years ago in Susan Miller's Textual Carnivals. I hate it when students try to essentialize their own experience in this fashion.
@Dega8987: Some faculty are jerks, as are some baristas, but certainly not all of them. There is a VAST literature about improving graduate education. Check out the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate as a start.
29. dega8987 - March 26, 2010 at 11:29 am
@demery1: I think boiling down what I wrote to "some people are jerks" misses the fact that I am inquiring as to why some people think what you're distilling as "being a jerK" is an essential part of what it is to be an academic. Is there literature on that I could read?
30. johntoradze - March 26, 2010 at 01:48 pm
Someone should write such columns about the sciences. Academics in general tend toward the higher end of the Asperger's spectrum. Understanding this clarifies a great deal about the semi-autistic emotional behavior so common in academia.
I know of a sciences department chair who made her graduate students provide her with free in-home child care. Another used his grad students to clean his house, collect and sort his mail. Another wouldn't get a female through his program unless she had sex with him - a lot. (And one of those females defended her sex-toy status when near to getting sign-off on her thesis by filing a false sexual misconduct report against a more honest professor.)
And then there is the falsified data...
You literature majors don't know how good you have it.
31. anonscribe - March 26, 2010 at 03:38 pm
let me outline the frustration some of us feel, which drives us to write negative comments about Dr. Addams' article. I dare you to find an article in the Chronicle--or any other trade journal dedicated to or related to the humanities--that provides BOTH realism and optimism for grad students currently in the humanities. the naysayers (like Dr. Addams and his pal Pannapacker) are irrationally pessimistic and jaded. the aesthetes with their life of the mind are irrelevant.
the argument breaks down like this: side 1 says the system is broken, no one will ever get a job, English grad students will end up, en masse, teaching remedial composition for minimum wage behind a Costco. side 2 says something like the humanities aren't about jobs, we should all be contented with the life of the mind, etc. Yet, I look around graduates from my program in the past four years, and 60% of them have good jobs (meaning, they're making above the median U.S. salary with job security anywhere from a community college to university). i'm not at Elite U, so I'm sure--were Elite U students willing to work at any institution that would provide them a modest living--they fare better.
How does my experience stack up to the mudslinging going around? Well, it doesn't fit anywhere. I come from an average family. I worked my way through undergrad and my MA as a busboy/bartender. If, at the end of five years with a living wage and free health insurance, I end up with a Ph.D., teaching composition at a CC for 47K a year (CA), I'll be very happy with my life. If in thirty years I'm nearing six figures (also average for TT's at a CC in CA), I'll still be very happy with my life.
Yet, somehow, this is the scenario authors on this site portray as the "dismal" job market in the humanities (or, alternately, as turning my back on the life of the mind). What aggravates me, personally, is the elitism and skewed expectations of many writing on the subject. The humanities are a job. Have you looked at the staff jobs on a U website? I'll take full-time, non-tenure track comp instructor over 80% of those jobs.
Irony of ironies, every person writing about this has a TT job. Where are these mysterious cadres of adjuncts WITH Ph.D.'s (according to the MLA's recent issue of "Profession," an overwhelming majority of adjuncts stopped at the M.A.) who are living in poverty? I don't see them anywhere. Instead, I see them making above the median income for the U.S., whining about the fact that they weren't the chosen few working at Elite U, making six figures and having their toes licked by beautiful men/women.
So, I write my comments on here in the off-chance that another grad student who comes from a place like me doesn't get discouraged. If all you ever wanted was a modest income not tending bar, working in a soulless office building, etc., then being an English Ph.D. still gives pretty odds compared to other options (like taking out 180K in debt to go to law school, only to end up doing doc review and smoking a pound of green a day to distract yourself from the monotony of your work, unable to get a job that will support your loan debt...or teaching at a middle school where your main duty is keeping pubescent boys from hitting each other...or going into a trade where you will be the first on an unemployment line during a recession...or filing memoranda for a huge @$$hole in a corporate park).
So, when articles like Dr. Addams' comes along, in which the profession is held up to a fantasy standard that no rational adult should have ever held it to, an article on top of a hundred identical articles, some of us get a little peeved.
I will now go back to making $20/hour (the most I've ever made in my life and twice the living wage in my state) on top of my free health insurance and free tuition to do the easiest work I've ever done. Tootles.
32. inglouriousbantered - March 26, 2010 at 04:02 pm
I actually enjoyed reading this piece and find the comments to be entertaining, as they remind me of how neurotic academics can be. I've been a grad student and on the faculty at several institutions, ranging from elite to bush league, and my take is that there are pockets of good and pockets of bad, but the recurring theme is that so many in acadème seem so unhappy.
One could go on and on about the ills of academic culture, but I predict even more disillusionment on the horizon, as colleges and universities act more and more like businesses in a globalized market for students. Good times.
33. illflyaway - March 26, 2010 at 04:16 pm
Wow what's with all the negative comments? Does Adams hit a bit too close to home for some of you? Did you not ready 'Lucky Jim'? Thought that was required for attending grad school. I completely enjoy his essays.
34. 22191530 - March 26, 2010 at 04:54 pm
johntoradze -
Care to point to any research to support your humorous comment about academics and Asperger's?
35. inglouriousbantered - March 26, 2010 at 05:39 pm
@22191530-
Why do you think johntoradze's comment was humourous? Did it strike a nerve?
36. futureprofessor - March 26, 2010 at 07:30 pm
Anonscribe, you are spot on and hilarious.
As I have considered going for a PhD, having applied to a few programs, I'm keenly interested in this discussion. Against all economic reason I'm considering the MFA instead, if only for the chance to produce and create, to make my own hours, and to get basic support while I study. 20K/year for someone who is working class poor (bussing tables, parking cars, and delivering food) is living like a king! Plus I get access to things I wouldn't otherwise, like health care, gym, library, computers and software!
As for the Autism comments, they say the same about software programmers, as if having a technical or esoteric skill means one is afflicted somehow.
37. slahey3 - March 29, 2010 at 06:23 pm
Reading one of these essays, and then reading the comments, has become a lovely new way of relaxing. Is this series the framework for a novel? Even better: a "then and now" novel, with the experience of hellish grad school in one chapter, then the response from the collected academics reading the experience online a decade later in the next, mixed in with narrative of life in present day academia.
...there is more to this than just an online column for the Chronicle, isn't there?
38. slqh2553 - March 30, 2010 at 06:09 am
The whole problem with Ph.D. programs and your snobbish university culture, as the essay insightfully points out, is that "teaching" is subordinated to "research." These institutions are in business to produce renowned, published researchers, NOT good teachers. A good teacher cares about his craft, not how many articles or books he's published. "Publish or perish" apparently is still as true today as it ever has been. A Ph.D. is a research degree, not a teaching degree. And many times the area of specialization and research is so narrowly focused and esoteric that you have to wonder how and why these scholarly projects get approved in the first place, much less why anyone in their right mind would want to spend countless hours writing a dissertation that hardly anyone outside academia will read. How is this dissertation--or the other arcane classes the Ph.D. candidate is required to take--going to make him or her a better teacher, or a better communicator? I'm not convinced that narrowly focused "scholarship" or pedantic research improves one's teaching ability. In fact, I think it can have a significant deleterious effect; all I have to do is remember how many POOR teachers and narrow-minded pedants I had when I was in the Ph.D. program!!! I wonder if universities will EVER wake up and realize that good teaching is FAR more important than fancy titles or impressive publications.
39. qzxcvbnm - April 01, 2010 at 12:13 am
These "Bait-and-Switch" columns are excellent!
They give a lot of insight to non-academics like me. After having read them (7 so far) there is absolutely no way in hell that I'd go into a grad program in English or the humanities, even though I love literature. It's all so disgraceful, and simply dehumanizing.
My advice: you'll be a better writer, teacher, scholar, and/or humanist if you get out of your comfort zone, get a paying job in the real world, and then go for the degree a few years later. You'll find that you're a lot more experienced, mature, and able to tolerate and understand the BS and politics that goes on in programs like this. In fact, you'll probably find it humerous.
Please keep up the good work. Can't wait to read Part 8.